Monday, July 19, 2010

Brazilian President Seeks to Outlaw Spanking

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

BRASILIA, July 16, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Brazil's socialist President Luiz Lula da Silva is proposing changes to the nation's Children and Adolescents Statute that will prohibit parents from spanking their children or applying any other form of corporal punishment.

In accordance with the proposed law, parents caught spanking or pinching their children, after a warning, could be required to receive psychological treatment. The case could also be turned over to child protective services, according to the AP.

"The proposed definition is applicable not only in the domestic sphere, but also for the other caretakers of children and adolescents - in schools, shelters, prisons. The bill is seeking a cultural change," said Carmen Oliveira, National Subsecretary for the Promotion of the Rights of Children and Adolescents.

"If punishment and whipping resolve the problem, the people wouldn't have corruption in the country. There wouldn't be so much crime in the country," Lula claimed in his comments on the bill.

However, Antonio Carlos Gomes da Costa, who was one of the authors of the original Children and Adolescents Statute, disagrees.

"I would say that spanking, if it is applied with judgment and moderation, is not a violation of human rights," he said in a recent interview. "For example, a child insists in putting her finger into the light socket, and her father tells her it is dangerous, that she can't, and she nonetheless insists, to give her a little spank or a strong verbal scolding, which I find to be preferable, is not 'destructive.' Punishment is necessary."

In order to act against parents who use corporal punishment on their children, the government will need at least one third party witness, such as another family member, or a fellow worker in a daycare center.

Lula's anti-spanking initiative is only one in along line of anti-family policies, which include attempts to further depenalize abortion, to censor TV to prohibit condemnation of sodomy, and to push the homosexual agenda within international institutions.